Why Does Privacy Matter?
The internet has been converted into a one of mass, indiscriminate surveillance. People, even those uncomfortable fundamentally with mass surveillance, often are of the belief that no real harm can be brought on by this to people who are not doing something illegal/engaging in something “bad”. There exists a worldview that those who care about their privacy and are against mass surveillance must be engaging in those things, otherwise why would they care?
Here, there is a dichotomy – good people vs bad people. Good people use the internet to read news or plan their kids events and thus have nothing to hide and have no concern with surveillance. Greenwald states that the reality of what makes people consider themselves “good” is in fact a submission of these people to be so “harmless and unthreatening and uninteresting” that the government doesn’t show interest in what they do online.
Greenwald references a 2009 interview with Google’s CEO Aaron Schmidt, who upon being asked about the privacy concerns people have with Google, said: “if you’re doing something that you don’t want other people to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” This Aaron Schmidt’s privacy was intruded on through an article that exposed much private information into his life, and in response he ordered his employees to cease speaking with the publication that did so.
Greenwald says that the people who say privacy isn’t important don’t actually believe it, because their actions contradict their words through implementing passwords on social media, or locks on their doors. They actively try to stop people entering their personal, private realm.
Source: Glenn Greenwald: Why Privacy matters (20:30)
